Between War and Politics

International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt

Patricia Owens

This is the first book length study of war in the thought of one of the twentieth-century's most important and original political thinkers.

Interest in Hannah Arendt's work has risen exponentially in recent years.

Forcefully demonstrates the relevance of her work to today's international issues.

Between War and Politics

International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt

Patricia Owens

Description

This is the first book length study of war in the thought of one of the twentieth-century's most important and original political thinkers. Hannah Arendt's writing was fundamentally rooted in her understanding of war and its political significance. But this element of her work has surprisingly been neglected in international and political theory. This book fills an important gap by assessing the full range of Arendt's historical and conceptual writing on war and introduces to international theory the distinct language she used to talk about war and the political world. It builds on her re-thinking of old concepts such as power, violence, greatness, world, imperialism, evil, hypocrisy and humanity and introduces some that are new to international thought like
plurality, action, agonism, natality and political immortality. The issues that Arendt dealt with throughout her life and work continue to shape the political world and her approach to political thinking remains a source of inspiration for those in search of guidance not in what to think but how to think about politics and war. Re-reading Arendt's writing, forged through firsthand experience of occupation and struggles for liberation, political founding and resistance in time of war, reveals a more serious engagement with war than her earlier readers have recognized. Arendt's political theory makes more sense when it is understood in the context of her thinking about war and we can think about the history and theory of warfare, and international politics, in new ways by thinking with
Arendt.

Between War and Politics

International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt

Patricia Owens

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Violence and Power, Politics and War3. Who Is Revealed in War? History, War and Storytelling4. The Boomerang Effect: On the Imperial Origins of Total War5. 'How Dangerous it Can Be to be Innocent': War and the Law6. Rage against Hypocrisy: On Liberal Wars for Human Rights7. Beyond Strauss, Lies and the War in Iraq: A Critique of Neoconservativism8. The Humanitarian Condition? On War and Making a Global PublicConclusionIndex

Between War and Politics

International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt

Patricia Owens

Author Information

Dr. Patricia Owens is Reader in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex.